


The Best Lie

by SincerelyYourNightmare



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: And he almost fourth-walled but not quite, Because he was the best baddy in the show, Gen, There's maybe some relationships hinted at, Victor Lives!, Victor joins the squad, Warning: Victor, learning to live together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21596092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SincerelyYourNightmare/pseuds/SincerelyYourNightmare
Summary: Victor, after months of laying low enough for the reports of his death to have made it through all the channels, had turned up at his loft four weeks ago, chipper and slightly psychotic as always.
Kudos: 9





	The Best Lie

**Author's Note:**

> This was written years ago, when I actually still liked and watched Burn Notice.   
> I can't quite muster up the motivation to get into that mindset to write more, so I just edited what I had.   
> Victor is my fave, but that might possibly be because I loved Daniel Jackson first.  
> ...Nah, Victor is awesome all by himself.  
> Also, a tease at Victor/Michael, because the chemistry was real.

_Nobody becomes a spy because they had a beautiful childhood with many happy memories and a successful schooling. Even those operatives that came from ‘stable’ homes and never skinned a knee without someone there to put a Band-Aid on it have some skeletons in the closet. If there’s anything that would bother you more than lying to your family and friends every day, sleeping with a gun and a backup knife, or learning to suppress your true emotional reactions, it would be having to look mass-murderers in the eye and tell them they had a deal. That tends to mess people up._

_Spies, in general, are not renowned for their excellent mental health. True instability is a liability for the higher-ups, so mostly it’s cognitive dissonance and the mild existential crises kept to a dull roar for the common spy. Sometimes, though, an operative is pushed to the edge one too many times and morality becomes a disconnected concept from their actions. Apathy is a strange and extremely dangerous demon for a spy to carry._

Victor was looking at him in true consternation. 

“Michael, it’s just one bullet, one head. Do the math!”

“When I said, ‘too high a risk’, I didn’t mean for you or me!” Michael waved his spoon at Victor’s chest, noticed he was gesticulating and gently put it down on the counter between them. “Our client would still have the local racketeering problem, only now it’s an underling recently promoted and with no idea of the right balance of fear and reprieve. It’ll be chaos in the whole neighbourhood!”

It was the usual gig: some desperate person heard by word-by-mouth that some dude was in the business of helping people in a bind. They headed to Michael with a story about a ring of extortionists in a Mexican part of town expanding from their chop-shop origins, showed off the arm cast and a shiner, tried to shove money at Michael in a hysterical manner, and Fi glared at him until he nodded and said he’d see what he could do. 

Victor, after months of laying low enough for the reports of his death to have made it through all the channels, had turned up at his loft four weeks ago, chipper and slightly psychotic as always. Immediately, he tried to offer his services as an excellent sniper for Michael’s team. Michael had declined the first time, and all consecutive offers, with increasing amounts of irritation. 

“Tch. You really take this ‘protecting the clients’ seriously, don’t you? Technically, he wants you to take care of the neighbourhood problem, not him specifically.” Victor gave him a mock-pout and rested his hand on his chin for extra effect. The effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that he was handcuffed to the arms and his back had to bend in painful ways. “But what if we just shoot them _all_ in the head? There, no upper management, no ring of thieves-slash-muggers! It’s perfect.”

Michael looked at Victor, his face deliberately blank so he would know that Michael was studying him. The man sitting in his vinyl chair just blinked back at him and casually let the handcuffs flop down to hang from the metal, opened with a pick that had already disappeared onto his person. 

Did Victor really not know how human beings worked? Had he separated himself so much from everyday civilian life that he couldn’t even strategize that the power vacuum would attract any other gangs in the area? Leaving a weed with its roots and stalk still intact was not a good plan. 

Sam walked into the tense air between them.

“Look, I know you’re having itchy-trigger-finger-withdrawals but while clipping all the major leaders will make them go away, it’s basically an invitation for anyone to waltz in and take over, potentially make things worse. A few blocks over, I hear there’s a booming business of the over-the-counter type. Won’t be long before that gets more serious and people get a little itchier about the nose and bulkier around the waistline,” Sam announced Michael’s thoughts, except with slightly more panache. 

Sipping his beer was keeping him from having to take part of the conversation, but Mikey was getting that look on his face that practically announced a bad-decision-sentence in the future. Victor was still in proximity of the kitchen knives, no doubt packing heat of his own somewhere on his body, and with Mike having a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease when it came to mentioning Victor’s time with Carla, Sam didn’t want to stitch anyone up again so soon since his own graze was only a few days ago. 

It was interesting, watching the two of them dance around. Victor provided the energy, the go-go-go sentiment, while Mikey provided the plan, the control. As a duo, they balanced themselves out. Sam felt a little bad, but they actually fit together better than Mikey and Fiona did. Now _that_ was a relationship that could probably be personified as a gun-runner’s warehouse on fire. 

Victor didn’t expect Michael to be getting better at talking about feelings, since he himself wasn’t any good at it and he wasn’t one to throw pebbles. Stones, cinderblocks, whatever. Victor knew he had some glaring issues that made other people uncomfortable, Sam could see that. Mike knew Victor’s desperation and the thought that he could have ended up just like Victor had probably crossed his mind, oh, several hundred times a day. Mike probably still thought him a sociopath, but he was made, forged, by Carla. It hadn’t been a choice, then. Sam could see Mike was hoping Victor would catch a good case of ‘the morals’ from them, but he never pushed for it, only stopped the bad reactions. Like offering to shoot anyone who was getting too ‘in the way’.

There were no further expectations. Any insight into one another was just used to forge a better partnership. And potential blackmail material, but that’s fairly typical for a pair of spies. 

“Thanks, _Sammy_.” Victor snarked right back, which was another thing that had Sam at a loss. How could a trained super-killer be so likeable? It was downright creepy just because it was true charm, not the bottled kind that Michael pulled out of his ass. “I know how power vacuums work. I was just saying,” he shrugged innocently at both of them and pointedly raised his hands, which had Sam smirking into his beer. “If you need a last-minute, save-the-client-right-now sorta play, you got it.”

Fi stormed into the loft without so much as a knock and stomped over to Mike’s workbench, dramatically dropping all the bags she was carrying with _just_ enough care that Sam knew there were explosive supplies in them. It was that, or shoes. She glanced at Victor’s newly-freed wrists.

“Hey Victor, how long was it this time?” she tossed over her shoulder while placing a row of bleach onto the counter. Explosives, then. 

“Oh, only five seconds once I put effort into it, but you know how distracting Michael can be,” Victor said and smiled beatifically as both Fi and Mike gave him a Look. He jumped up, smacked his hands on the counter which was slowly becoming covered in dangerous liquids, and grinned at the lot of them. “And who said my trigger finger wasn’t being sated somewhere else, sport? You’re not the only thing in town, y’know?”

He sauntered out of the loft with just enough pep in his step that Sam wondered… Which had probably been the whole point. Mike was staring at the slammed door left in his wake, while Fiona was staring at Sam in an inquiring way.

“Was that a thinly veiled reference to taking hit contracts on the side, or a thinly veiled innuendo?”

Mike was still staring at the door. “With Victor, could be either. Or both.” He sounded dazed. 

_Spies have many strategies to lie. One of them, the most dangerous, is to lie to themselves and believe that the bullshit they’re spewing is the truth. Most spies avoid that one unless there is no other way to get through the situation._

_The problem comes when the lie gets believed for too long and the spy forgets that they made the decision to delude themselves._


End file.
